High Battery Drain During Suspend on elementary OS 8 (ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15) #288
Description
What Happened?
Battery Consumption During Suspend – Technical Report
elementary OS 8 (Circe)
1. Purpose of this report
This report documents a single battery consumption test performed during suspend mode on elementary OS 8.
The goal is not to report a bug or criticize the system, but to clarify whether the observed behavior is expected given the operating system and hardware characteristics.
This test was performed once, only to gain a general understanding of suspend power usage. It does not represent my normal daily usage pattern.
2. Test scenario description
- Test type: Single, manual test
- Period: Overnight, approximately from 01:00 to 07:00
- Power source: Battery only
- Laptop state: Lid closed
- User activity: None
- Applications running: None intentionally opened
- Purpose: Observe battery drain during suspend over several hours
A battery usage graph screenshot from this period is attached.
3. Observed behavior
- Battery level dropped by approximately 8–12% over ~6 hours of suspend.
- The discharge appears continuous rather than flat during the suspend interval.
- This behavior was observed only once and has not been tested repeatedly.
4. Operating system information
- Distribution: elementary OS
- Version: elementary OS 8
- Codename: Circe
- Base: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
- **Kernel: 6.14.0-37-generic
5. Hardware information
Laptop
- Model: ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 GA503RM
BIOS / Firmware
- BIOS version: GA503RM.319
- BIOS release date: 2024-04-19
CPU
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS with Radeon Graphics
- Architecture: x86_64
- CPU governor: powersave
- CPU driver: amd_pstate
GPUs
- Integrated GPU: AMD Radeon 680M
- Discrete GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile (Max-Q)
- Runtime status of NVIDIA GPU after resume:
6. Power profile configuration
Output of powerprofilesctl during the test:
7. Battery information (after resume)
- Battery model: ASUS A32-K55
- Design capacity: 90.0 Wh
- Current full capacity: ~69.1 Wh
- Battery health: ~76.7%
- State: Discharging
- Observed discharge rate after resume: ~22–35 W
8. Notes and considerations
- This was a single test, not a long-term measurement.
- The suspend interval used is not representative of my normal daily usage.
- The goal is only to understand if this consumption level during suspend aligns with what elementary OS currently offers on this type of hardware.
- The report is shared in good faith and with appreciation for the elementary OS project.
9. Attachments
- Battery consumption graph screenshot showing the suspend interval
- This technical report
End of report
Steps to Reproduce
This was a single, one-time test, done only to clarify a personal doubt. I cannot say whether the behavior always repeats in the same way, as this is not representative of my normal daily usage.
Expected Behavior
I would like to share a battery consumption analysis I did on my notebook running elementary OS 8, purely as a question for better understanding, and not as a complaint or criticism.
This was a single, one-time test, done only to clarify a personal doubt. I cannot say whether the behavior always repeats in the same way, as this is not representative of my normal daily usage.
During this specific test, I left the system in suspend mode overnight (approximately from 01:00 to 07:00), running only on battery, with the laptop lid closed and with no applications or programs open, and no user activity during that period. The observed battery drop was around 8–12% over this interval.
My intention is simply to understand whether this level of battery consumption during suspend is considered expected behavior for elementary OS on my hardware scenario, or if I might be misinterpreting the results from a user perspective.
To provide proper context, I have attached a technical report containing detailed information about hardware, firmware, kernel, and power management, along with a battery usage graph from this test.
I’m sharing this because I genuinely want elementary OS to have the best performance possible among Linux distributions. It is the system I use daily, one I really enjoy, and I’m happy to contribute in any way I can to help the project continue improving.
Thank you for your time and for the work you do on elementary OS.
OS Version
8.x (Circe)
OS Architecture
amd64 (on most hardwares)
Session Type
Secure Session (Wayland, This is the default)
Software Version
Latest release (I have run all updates)
Log Output
Hardware Info
No response